Zuma's MK Party takes early lead on KZN provincial ballot

Source: EWN Traffic
Author: Bernadette Wicks

DURBAN - Former president Jacob Zuma's new uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party is taking an early lead on the KwaZulu-Natal provincial ballot.

A hotly-contested province, KwaZulu-Natal has traditionally been an African National Congress (ANC) stronghold, with strong Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and Democratic Alliance (DA) support bases.

The MK Party is clearly very much in the mix now, though.

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Counting, of course, only started in the early hours of Thursday morning, and it is still very early days, with only 4.9% of the of the province's votes, or just under 80,000 of them, having been tallied by the time the last update was provided - which was just after 8 am.

By that point, MK party had received 32,736 votes on the provincial ballot, leading the pack.

The ANC had just under 16,000, the IFP just under 15,000, and the DA with 11,300-odd.

However, this is a marathon and not a sprint and the majority of the votes were still to be counted. What the final picture will look like remains to be seen.